ON THIS DAY

● 1520: Montezuma II, last Aztec ruler, was killed in Mexico City during the Spanish conquest of Mexico under Cortez.

● 1800: The Glasgow Police Act, the first such Act in Britain, was finally passed through the persistence of Glasgow city authorities. This allowed the formation of the City of Glasgow Police.

● 1859: The great tightrope walker Blondin crossed Niagara Falls from the US to Canada in just eight minutes. The rope was stretched 1,100ft and suspended 160ft above the Falls.

● 1894: London’s Tower Bridge was officially opened to traffic by the Prince of Wales.

● 1934: Hitler’s rival Ernst Rohm and hundreds of influential Nazis were murdered by the SS in “The Night of the Long Knives”.

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1936: Margaret Mitchell’s

Gone With The Wind was published.

● 1940: German forces occupied the Channel Islands.

● 1960: Norman Bates was unleashed onto an unsuspecting world when Hitchcock’s classic chiller Psycho was premiered in New York.

● 1974: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Soviet-born ballet dancer, defected while on tour in Canada with the Bolshoi Ballet.

● ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Activists in Istanbul reported that Turkish authorities had banned a pride march for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights for the fifth year.

● BIRTHDAYS: Vincent D’Onofrio, actor, 61; Rupert Graves, actor, 57; Gary Pallister, former footballer, 55; Mike Tyson, retired boxer, 54; James Martin, TV chef, 48; Cheryl Cole, singer, 37;.